Baptism Reveals God.

Revelation 1:4-8

January 13, 2018 

The Baptism of the Lord

I.

Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, when Jesus Christ comes to John at the Jordan River and submits to being immersed in the water.  The Lord’s baptism is important because it reveals who he is and who God is.  Christ reveals God’s nature as this movement outward and downward, this condescension, this immersion into our world and lives, this humble self-emptying which demonstrates in our broken time the eternal now of God’s love.

In Jesus Christ, God comes into our flesh at his birth, into our world at his baptism, and even into our death on the cross.  Jesus’ whole life is God’s supreme self-offering and self-emptying as the fullest revelation of God’s love. God identifies with us thoroughly so that in him we may come to identify thoroughly with God. 

Too often people think that God is some cosmic exaggeration of Caesar, like a big boss in the sky, an imperial terrorist, a malign, narcissistic autocrat, an omnipotent despot.  But if that is the case it makes no sense for Jesus Christ to be baptized.  It would be out of character for such a deity to stoop that low. 

But the whole revelation of Jesus Christ show us that that picture of God is not real, it is just a projection based on our own experience, our own fear and anger, our own understanding of power.  Jesus says basically “Yeah, if you’re stuck in time and ego-centricity and sinfulness that’s the way you would think; but I live in the eternal now, and I’m telling you that righteousness and justice is fulfilled not in cruelty and worldly ‘success' but in humility, generosity, self-giving, sacrifice, and service.  I do not let John baptize me in spite of who I am; no, my baptism is very the expression of who I am as the God of love.”  

For God comes into the water of chaos, the river of time, with us, absorbing, sharing, embracing, overcoming, and redeeming our world, and with it, us.

It is this God, who is revealed in Jesus Christ, the God who is ever offering life and forgiveness to us in love, whom we have to hold firmly in our hearts and minds if we are going to have any understanding of the book of Revelation.  Because, yes, if we remain burdened by a view of God as a willful, punishing, petulant tyrant in the sky, heartlessly throwing lightning bolts at us for his entertainment, then the book of Revelation does get intolerably nasty.

Jesus is affirmed as God’s Son not because of his power, wealth, and popularity, not because he is so successful at grabbing and holding on to these things, not because he forces his will on the world, but precisely because God is always about giving away, offering up, pouring out blessings and life for and to others.  And in so doing God reveals that all are one in their participation in God’s being and goodness.  

Only in this — to us paradoxical and even ironic — sense then is Jesus and God “almighty.”  God’s almightiness is precisely proved in the way God’s love, light, and life are encoded and embedded in the very nature and essence of all that God has made.  Almighty God is the strong and solid bedrock beneath everything.

II.

This is what John makes clear at the outset of his book when he refers to Jesus as the One “who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood.”  The flow of self-offering, self-emptying, liberating, redeeming love is what God is about.  He uses the image of the Passover Lamb whose life-blood is poured out for the salvation and deliverance of the people from slavery.  The lamb’s blood gives life to the people who trust in it.

John even remembers how the prophet Zechariah talks about the One who is “pierced,” which refers both to the Passover Lamb and to Jesus.  It is the piercing, the cutting open so their blood may flow, which connects the two.

This is all given here at the beginning of this book, which is really a long letter, to establish his credentials as a legitimate Christian teacher.  He is saying things that his hearers would all have understood and affirmed as the heart of the Way of Jesus.  Jesus was killed by the Romans, absorbing the full brunt of their cruelty and power, yet nevertheless is now alive and giving life to his disciples, the gospel communities.  His Spirit now spreads across the empire, establishing a new anti-empire of peace, equality, freedom, and justice.  And he will return “with the clouds.”    

For John, Christ reveals the very structure of reality.  That’s why twice in this passage he refers to God and Christ as the One “who is and who was and who is to come.”  God determines the nature of the universe and time, bringing together past, future, and present.  Salvation in him means participating in his giving, sharing, losing, and even dying.  For our old ego-centric way of thinking based on fear and violence also has to die so the new life can be born in us.

The people of God understand this.  They have no delusions of worldly success, power, wealth, or fame.  They are an oppressed and persecuted community, holding on for dear life in a hostile environment.  It is of central importance to remember that just as John depicts Jesus and God in terms of great humility, compassion, and service, so also the people hearing these words were generally not rich, privileged, or connected members of the establishment.    

They consider themselves to be a new and alternative Kingdom, a social, economic, and political order that rejects Rome and lives in resistance to the predatory leaders, values, and practices of the empire.  They are also a new and alternative priesthood, replacing the old corrupt and ineffective priesthood in Jerusalem.  The new priesthood is based on the final self-offering of Christ, whose blood, shed on the cross and now shared in the eucharistic feast, gives life and forgiveness to the whole world.

III.

Jesus Christ reveals the future.  In a sense he comes from the future because he reveals the nature and destiny of creation and the will of the Creator.  It is a future we may choose and participate in by trusting in him and shaping our lives according to his example and teachings.   

John is beginning to articulate these two “worlds,” two futures.  There is the true world of creation ruled by the One “who is and who was and who is to come,” revealed in Jesus “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  And there is the world of those who rejected and killed him, the demise of which he will be telling us about at some length in the pages to come.  That is a dismal and horrific future spawned by those whose delusion and violence enslaved us and demanded Christ’s blood, and who will wail in terror when they see him, the God of love, “coming with the clouds,” worshiped by faithful witnesses.  

He is writing to encourage those who have already made the decision to stand together with Jesus and his church against the powers of hatred and death, but who still need encouragement.  Because that choice of which world, which future we will have, is a choice that has to be made all the time, every day.  We have to decide whom we will follow.  Will it be, on the one hand, the whole ego-centric empire built on fear and violence, which in those days was represented by Rome, or, on the other hand, will it be Jesus Christ and his Kingdom of equality, freedom, justice, and peace?

  

Between these two there is no compromise, no common ground, no cooperation.  To live in one world is to reject the other.  We cannot in any sense have both.  They are diametrically opposed, as the Lord says about whether we follow God or money.

Much of the rest of this book will spell out the consequences of aligning ourselves with a world that is doomed and falling apart because of its idolatry and injustice.  Since it is built on lies it dissolves when it encounters the truth.  Since it is expressed in violent and selfish behavior, it experiences God’s love as fire and judgment.  A world out of synch with God will not stand because God is the only reality and truth.  A future apart from God is not a future at all.  The fate of that world that does not have its foundation in God is going to get ugly.  Therefore, do not depend on it.

In the meantime there is this community that is built on the rock that is the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the One “who was and who is and who is to come.”  He represents and fulfills the whole history of God’s people, including and revealing especially the future.  Because of the sense in which he is from the future so also his people live according to the future he reveals.  The begin provisionally to live in his future, now.

IV.

This is what we are about.  We gather each Sunday to basically live today in God’s future.  And that future is the love and freedom of God’s new Kingdom and priesthood, empowered by God’s life and Spirit.  That future is what we find when we pour out our own selves in compassion and forgiveness, in acceptance and humility, in generosity and caring.  That future is our oneness in Christ with whom we share a common humanity, and realize our oneness with all people, with everything God has made, and even with God.

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